Storm Surge (17 page)

“The thing
is,” the leader said, and
Bohler
realized with a
sinking in his gut that he wasn’t about to see the gates of Heaven, and worse,
that the ordeal that had seemed to go on forever had probably lasted less than
a minute. “The thing is,” the leader said, “you’ve kind of pissed me off. You
and you buddies in that helicopter annoyed me. So I advise you not to upset me
any further.”

Bohler
cleared his throat. “Fuck…” he
started, but before he could complete the insult, he was underwater again. He
hadn’t even had time to spit defiance.

It went just
like the last time, the iron-hard hand holding him under until his vision
darkened and he saw the imminence of Heaven, then the yanking back to the
harshness of life.

“Now,” the
voice said. “Let’s get down to business. Why are you here?”

There was no
point in dissembling,
Bohler
thought. What would be
the harm in telling them about the waitress and her daughter? It wasn’t the
kind of threat these people would even need to do anything about. If they knew
that, part of
Bohler’s
mind thought, it’d be okay.
And this other character, this Mercer, had every reason to keep his head down.
Still, there was something that stuck in his craw about telling these bastards
anything. As the hand at the back of his neck plunged him beneath the water again,
he realized he’d thought too long.

It went the
same as last time—the resolve to hold out, fading as the craving for oxygen
became more and more irresistible, the oncoming darkness, the resignation to
the inevitability of the end….this time they left him under just a little
longer, and the stale oxygen in his lungs exploded out in a mass of bubbles.
The sudden reflexive intake of breath drew in some of the seawater, the harsh
sting of the salt and the shock of the cold water making him cough and retch.

“You know the
best part?” he heard a voice say. “This isn’t even legally torture anymore.”

He turned his
head slightly. He was dazzled by the flashlight in his eyes but he could barely
make out a shadowy figure behind it. He grinned at his captor. Then he threw up
on him. His aim was true; the light dimmed as the contents of
Bohler’s
stomach, mixed with bile and seawater, covered and
coated the lens.

“Son of a…”
the laughter of the other men in the room was the last thing
Bohler
heard before the side of his head exploded and
everything went black.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

“Oh, my God,”
Sharon said. They were standing in the open door of the clubhouse, looking out
from beneath the covered entrance. The ocean was up higher than she’d ever
seen. Waves were actually breaking over the seawall, drenching the perfectly
manicured lawn in front of the clubhouse.

“It’s going to
get worse,” Mercer said.

“Will it get
inside the clubhouse?” Glory said from over Mercer’s shoulder.

“Probably.”

“What do we
do?”

“We need to
find higher ground,” Mercer said.

“Where?”

“I don’t know.
The ground slopes up from here.
All the way to the
lighthouse.”

“Maybe we need
to go there,” Glory said.

Sharon shook
her head. “Don’t you think that’s where those men are going?”

“When I saw
them,” Mercer said, “they were going the other way.” He rubbed his jaw
thoughtfully. “Now why would they do that? We need to know what they’re doing.
What they’re here for.”

“To do that,”
Sharon said, “We have to go find them.”

“No,” Mercer
said. “I do.”

“And
what?”
Glory said.
“Leave us alone?”

Mercer turned
a cold stare on her. “You’d get in my way.”

Glory raised
her chin and looked defiantly at him. “Looks like my Mom saved your ass back
there.”

“Yeah,” Mercer
said. “But then you wouldn’t let me kill the son of a bitch.”

“We needed to
run,” Glory said.

“That,” Mercer
replied, “Is why you don’t come with me. You get an enemy down, you first
thought is to run. Mine is to take him off the board for good.”

“Jesus,
What
the hell did you DO in Chicago?” Sharon said.

Mercer gave
her a tight smile.
“Human resources.
I took care of
personnel problems.”

“You were
like, what,” Glory said, “a hit man?”

Mercer didn’t
answer.

“Holy fuck,”
Glory said. “This is so…” she stopped dead at the look in Mercer’s eyes.

“Glory,”
Sharon said quietly. “Go clean up in the kitchen.”

“But…”

“DO it,
Glory!”

The girl
walked off, shoulders slumped. Sharon looked at Mercer for a long moment. He
turned away and looked out at the advancing sea. He closed the door and turned
the lock.

“So
now what?”
Sharon
said quietly. “Now we know your secret, you kill us, too?”

“No,” he said.
“No women. No kids.
And no civilians.”

“Thanks,” she
said. “That makes me feel much better, coming from someone who murders people
for a living.”

“Used to,” he
corrected. “Now I just do it when I need to. And it’s not murder. Not the way I
see it.”

“Lovely.”

“Sharon,” he
said, “
if
I was going to kill you, you’d be dead
already. You don’t believe me?” He drew the knife from his belt. She started to
back away, until she saw he was holding it by the blade. He held it out to her,
handle first. “Take it,” he said.

“No,” she
said.

“Take it,” he
insisted.

“I can’t.” She
couldn’t tear her gaze from his eyes.

“If you’re so
afraid of me,” he said, “I’m giving you the opportunity to do something about
it. Take the knife. Take it and stab me, and then run away.”

“What the hell
is the matter with you?” she whispered.

“From where I
sit, nothing,” he said. “I think I’m pretty well-adjusted.”

“So
well-adjusted, you’re asking me to kill you.”

“No,” he said
patiently, “I’m giving you the chance to do it. I don’t want it to happen. But
I want you to know. I’ll never hurt you.
Or your daughter.”

“Why are you
doing this?”

For the first
time, he looked away. “Those men need killing. You don’t.”

“And they need
killing because they broke your rules.”

He still
wouldn’t look at her.
“Yeah.”

She stepped
forward, took the knife from him. She dropped her arm and let it hang by her
side. “And that’s all.”

“Yeah,” he
said. “That’s it.”

She looked
down at the knife.

He continued
to look away, not speaking.

She turned the
knife around in her hand and presented the handle to him. “I really wish you
were Max,” she whispered. “I think I could have gotten to like Max.”

He took the
knife from her gently. He looked back at her and smiled.
“Yeah.
I
kinda
liked him, too. He was a pretty good guy.”

“So,” she
said, “Is Max gone?
Forever?”

He tucked the
knife back in his belt. “I don’t know. Right now, though, I don’t know how much
good Max would be to you.”

“More than you
might think,” she said. “I need…”

“You need to
go in the back and gather up as much bottled water and food as you can carry.
Wherever we end up, we may be there for a while.” She hesitated. “GO!” he
barked. He didn’t wait to see if she went or not. He opened the door again and
looked out. He didn’t know if it was his imagination, but the ocean seemed even
higher.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

“Jesus,
Blake,” Worth said, “Did you kill him?”

Blake didn’t
answer directly. “Son of a BITCH!” he spat down at
Bohler
.
Vomit continued to drip down the front of his poncho. He stepped forward and kicked
the unconscious deputy in the stomach.

Worth gave
Moon a worried glance. He had never seen Blake lose control like this. Moon’s
face remained calm. “You want me to do him now?” he croaked.

With a visible
effort, Blake got hold of himself. “No,” he said. He may be more agreeable to
telling us what we want to know when he wakes up.”

“I don’t think
he knows where they are,” Worth said.

“Right now,
what I want to know is who the hell that guy is that’s with the women and the
girl. I figure Barney Fife here ought to know.”

“What does it
matter?” Worth said. “He’s just some guy.”

“He’s some guy
that split Barstow’s head open,” Blake snapped. “A twenty year combat vet. I
want to know who could do that.” He turned to Moon. “Watch him,” he said. “Call
me if he wakes up.” Moon just nodded. “Worth, come with me.”

They exited
the bathroom and went into the well-lighted luxury of the master suite. Blake
turned to Worth. “You still good for this mission?” he demanded.

“Why wouldn’t
I be?”

“I don’t know.
I’m just getting a feeling you’re turning a little shaky.”

“You’re shaken
up yourself,” Worth countered. “That’s why. You look after yourself. I’m still
frosty.” The two men stared at each other for a moment,
then
Blake turned as if to go. He stopped when Worth spoke again.

“I do want to
know one thing, though.”

Blake turned
back. “Why Moon’s here.”

“I think I
know why Moon’s here. And I think I know why you didn’t tell the rest of your team
about him.” Blake didn’t answer. His hand moved slightly and Worth raised his
machine gun.

“You need to
stand down, Worth,” Blake said calmly.

“There’s only
one reason I can think of. Moon was supposed to kill the rest of us when the
job was done. Me, Barstow, Phillips, even Montrose. So there’d be fewer people
who knew about this. And, I figure, more money for you. I’m thinking you got a
budget for this job, and the fewer people you had to pay off at the end, the
more left over for you. And maybe Moon, except I’m thinking you planned to off
him, too.”

“You expect me
to answer that?”

“No. But I do
expect you to tell me if that plan’s changed, now that we have new problems to
deal with.”

“There wasn’t
any plan like that,
Worth
.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’ll tell you
this, though,” Blake went on. “You know the old
saying as
well as I do
.”

“No plan
survives first contact with the enemy,” Worth quoted.

Blake nodded.
“Which is why I asked if your head’s still in the game. I need every man on his
toes here. We’ve got a wild card running around loose out there. At some point
we’re going to have to go after him and the other two.”

Worth lowered
the gun. “That’s all I needed to hear.”
For now
, he thought.

“Fine,” Blake
said. “Now let’s go check and see what progress Montrose is making.”

Montrose sat
in the big leather chair behind the Senator’s desk, her boots up on the
mahogany top. She had a sour expression on her face as she started at the
screen of a laptop computer whose flickering glow provided the only
illumination in the room. A pair of wires led from a card inserted in a slot in
the side of the laptop, drooping across a few feet if
intervening
space to the niche in the wall where the safe was. The front control panel had
been pried off and the wires disappeared into the space where it had been.

“We’re
gonna
need the cutter,” she said. “This thing
ain’t
workin
’.”

“It’s state of
the art,” Blake insisted. He walked over and looked at the screen. Numbers were
cascading across it as the powerful decryption program inside searched with
inhuman speed for the combination that would open the electronic lock.

“May be,”
Montrose drawled, “but it
ain’t
gettin
’
that safe door open. I think what happens is, once the security system got a
few wrong numbers, it
figgered
it was
bein
’ hacked, and shut down.”

“What do you
mean, it shut down?”

“I mean, I
think this safe is rigged so when anyone tries to crack the entrance codes, the
combination goes away. There’s no way to open it.”

“That’s nuts,”
Worth said.

Montrose
shrugged.
“Maybe not.
Maybe there’s some other way to
open it. Maybe the combination resets when the intrusion stops. Or maybe,” she
looked at Blake, “what’s inside is
somethin
’ the
owner
figgers
if he can’t have, no one else can
either. In any case,” she took her feet off the desk, “We
ain’t
got time to be graceful anymore. If we need to get this motherfucker open by
the time the eye passes over, we need the cutter.
Now.”